We’ll be giving away many prizes throughout the event, so be sure to share with friends using #WileyHumanitiesFest on Twitter and Facebook, and comment extensively on the festival site.

Find out why thought leaders in philosophy like David S. Oderberg (Editor of Ratio), Sally Scholz (Editor of Hypatia), Willem B. Drees (Editor of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Sciences), Chris Higgins (Editor of Educational Theory), Ethan Kleinberg (Editor of History and Theory), Clara Fischer and Shelley Park (Guest Editors of upcoming special issues of Hypatia) find value in the humanities, and what they say is next for philosophy.

We have no explanation of consciousness. Yet from the origins of life to the workings of the atom, science has provided answers when none were thought possible. Might we be about to crack consciousness as well? An impossible fantasy or an exciting adventure for mankind? Watch Secrets of the Mind.

Petra Tschakert, Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and The Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI) at Pennsylvania State University, discusses important themes in gender and climate change for the Hypatia Special Issue on Climate change.

Nancy Tuana, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Rock Institute for Ethics at Pennsylvania State University, discusses important themes in gender and climate change for the Hypatia Special Issue on Climate change, which she co-edited with Chris Cuomo.

Our showcase of the ‘Philosophers on Film’ series continues today with this interview with Prof Michael Williams (Johns Hopkins University), interviewed during his recent visit to NIP. The goal of the series is to help foster among the public a clearer idea of what pursuing philosophy involves today and what its contemporary practitioners are like.

About the NIP: The Northern Institute of Philosophy (NIP) is dedicated to excellence in research in the core areas of analytic philosophy. Directed by Professor Crispin Wright, the Institute is home to teams of senior researchers, postdoctoral fellows and PhD students, working at the leading edge of contemporary philosophy to produce research of the highest standard. The Institute holds principles of collaboration in research to be paramount, both within and across Institute projects.

A lot of professional philosophers lack the imagination required to think about what it’s like not to understand something. Some have got into a complacent habit of speaking to each other in a kind of technical language, which is almost at times the avoidance of doing philosophy.

…So says Nigel Warburton in this fascinating interview with The Philosopher’s Magazine, outlining some of his frustrations with academic philosophy today, and the reasons he’s recently resigned his position with the Open University.

It’s a lucid and provocative interview, the main thrust of which is that (a) philosophy should properly be in the business of exploring ideas that matter to people and (b) it has stagnated to the extent that it no longer does so, with some exceptions. Why, asks Warburton, have philosophers been so silent on important public debates like those surrounding freedom of expression, gay marriage, 9/11?

Aaron Meskin is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds. He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on aesthetics and other philosophical subjects. He was the first aesthetics editor for the online journal Philosophy Compass, and he co-edited Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007). He is a former Trustee of the American Society for Aesthetics and is Treasurer of the British Society of Aesthetics.

Roy T Cook is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, a Resident Fellow of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, and an Associate Fellow of the Northern Institute of Philosophy (Aberdeen). He works in the philosophy of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, and the aesthetics of popular art. He blogs about comics at: www.pencilpanelpage.wordpress.com

AM: I thought there was enough good work out there being done on comics that someone could produce a good book on the subject matter. I like to work collaboratively, so when I met Roy it seemed like a good idea to work together. I suppose there’s also a sort of selfish reason–philosophy is about conversation and I wanted more conversation (and more interlocutors) on a topic I care about.

RTC: Aaron was nice enough to ask me – someone with no prior professional experience in aesthetics – to comment on a three-paper session on comics at an aesthetics conference. The volume was conceived over coffee at the same conference, based on the positive response to the papers and resulting discussion.